I'm a little late to this controversy, having reported on the loss, but not the ensuing anger. You'll have to forgive me: In the wee hours of the morning, when I saw an email with the news headline, "South Korean female trio DQed in Vancouver," I thought it was spam for a porn link and I deleted it.
As of this morning, I have not read any blog entries on Jim Hewish, the Australian judge who disqualified both South Korean Kim Dong-sung in the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics and now the ROK women's relay team, except for this post at The Marmot's Hole, so my thoughts are my own and I don't know if anyone else has already expressed this.
Assuming for a moment that there is no possibility that the guy really is on the take or really has it in for South Korean dominance of skating (like some do for Korean ladies pro golf), then South Korea's hardcore netizenry may be entirely to blame for this one. The call was one that, according to the link The Marmot provided, could have gone either way, but the orgy of hate unleashed by the hardcore super comment tribe and their hacker buddies in 2002 forced his hand in Vancouver: Were Mr Hewish to have sided with the ROK team this time, he would have left himself open to accusations of caving in against his judgement.
Shame on you. The chickens have come home to roost.
And a special notice to prosecutors in South Korea: take the full force of the law and go after anyone who broke the law by publishing private information about Mr Hewish. Show that you're serious that cyberstalking is bad no matter what the reason.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have whales to watch. No Daily Kor today, kiddies. You haven't earned it.
UPDATE:
Jim Hewish is now under police protection at the Vancouver games. His house in Sydney is under armed guard, too. He took this serious enough that he bowed out of officiating the race where Ohno was disqualified, but he did watch it in the stands.
There's no question that some Korean crazies go overboard when it comes to these sporting events. I'm ashamed when I hear of this whole Ozzie embassy incident.
ReplyDeleteYet, I do think it's not a coincidence that this Hewish guy was the one behind the two bad calls against the Koreans. I mean...if you watched it, it took him several minutes to determine if it was a DQ. He even discussed it with one or two other judges at length. The commentator on NBC even said that if it takes that long, there shouldn't be a DQ as that means it wasn't a clear impeding move by the Korean skater. Horrible officiating. But oh well.....I'd rather Korea be known as the country that always gets burned with the bad calls than the country that is a poor sport with crazy nuts. (by the way, it's not just in skating...remember that Paul Hamm incident in men's gymnastics....not cool).
Maybe it took so long for them to announce their decision because they were looking at a blueprint of the building and mapping out the exits.
ReplyDeletehaha! "On the count of three, I'll gradually announce the DQ, and you start heading out of the west exit and start your car."
ReplyDelete